The Finish Line
by Disalae
Summary: Let's back up and figure this out from the beginning, shall we? Light M for brief sexytimes. S3 spoilers.


**viii.**

Gabriel Gray thinks that for the first time, he was in love. Her name was Elle Bishop and being with her was like holding two spark plugs together and trying not to get hurt. So why is she laying now on a beach, her body charred and black?

Let's back up.

**i.**

So it goes like this: Gabriel Gray grew up having a lot of different wants and desires, but one cohesive goal: he wanted his life to _mean_ something.

When he was a kid, he used to watch his father fix timepieces in awe. He wasn't just putting cogs and wheels and tiny springs together, it was _more_ than that. If his dad wound the springs too tight or the lever escapement wasn't spot on the _tick-tick-tick_ would be too fast or too slow, and someone might miss their train and they'd be late to their job interview and then it'd be over, right? If that wasn't important, Gabriel wasn't sure what was.

He told his mom that and she'd _laughed_, of all things, and grabbed his chin as she kneeled down to his level. "Oh Gabriel," she'd said, and she rubbed her thumb across his cheek roughly, "you're gonna be more than just a watchmaker. You're gonna be _special,_ aren't you son?"

His father had yelled even louder that night than usual, asking his mother if special had ever put food on their table, and the next day told Gabriel he was going to run the shop when he grew up whether he liked it or not, and that was that. No more of this funny business.

And so it went. Maybe it wasn't _special_, but everything had its purpose. Gabriel supposed it probably wasn't fun to be a mosquito either, but spiders have to eat.

So he lived his life day to day repairing watches, and he became so _normal_ and like his father that all he needed was an eager to please son to bully and a skittish, overbearing wife to yell at and he'd have a happily ever after just like everyone else. No, he knew what normal was, he'd watched it play out before him every day of his life, and he decided he was _not_ going to be that.

**ii.**

Brian Davis, well, that one was different than all the others because he wasn't quite sure what came over him. When he rose from the floor with blood coating his hands, his heart started to beat so hard it felt like he had hands inside of his chest, pounding on his ribcage like a drum. He panicked and cut the body into pieces, filling tens of trash bags full of garbage with one body part in each, and threw them each in a different dumpster around the neighborhood. He was up until 6am scrubbing and bleaching the floor clean and shit shit _shit_ this wasn't special, this was just _sick_.

Figuring out the gallows knot was easy enough. Finding the perfect place to hang it wasn't. He wasn't an exhibitionist but he had no open rafters in his tiny apartment, so the shop it was. It was a cowardly way to end his cowardly life, and he found it quite poetic.

What was not poetic were the blubbering words of shame and awkwardness that followed when he found himself in the arms of a woman for the first time in years (and certainly the most beautiful one) as he lay struggling to breathe on the floor. What a girl like Elle was doing here would only become his concern when she put her hand on his knee (_keep it together)_ and said she wanted to come back and see him in a few days to make sure he was okay. "And this time," she'd said, "you'd better have both feet on the ground."

After she left he realized that maybe getting just one kiss from a pretty girl like her would be enough special for now.

A week later, as he stood kneeling over one more body he was going to have to dispose of somehow, he was wondering when that kiss was going to come and save him from himself.

**iii.**

She was chained to the ground and electricity was crawling over his skin in a way that might have been beautiful if she hadn't been suffering so much from it. Despite the situation he couldn't help but let his mind wander to what he would do if she were more willing, or in less pain. The thought sent a shiver up his spine; or rather, _she_ did as she pumped him full of electricity and he shined light a light bulb.

Gabriel can still remember the way she felt under his fingertips once she relented to his touch. Her skin hummed with uncontrolled current and she felt cold and damp with sweat. When he took her power without taking anything but her pain with it, he realized maybe special didn't have to be so violent and crimson red.

**iv.**

His shoulder hurt like a bitch but he was more concerned with the way her lips felt against his and the way her tongue was exploring the inside of his mouth. They fell to the ground in an undignified thud and he pulled the sleeping bag left by the departed (well, maybe not quite yet) Bennet's out and spread it on the floor before laying her down on the ground beneath him.

He could feel it, this sense of normalcy, and he knew she could too because she whispered the word out loud, and for the first time it didn't sound like a curse.

He kicked off his pants hurriedly as she writhed beneath him, but before he could pin her down again she sat up and took him in her mouth. A moan escaped his lips and he stalled, the sensation of her running her tongue up and down his hardness as she sucked and stroked causing his eyes to roll back in his head.

Pushing her away before it was all over far too soon, he laid himself over her. His hands mapped her skin before he slowly slid two fingers deep inside her, testing and teasing as she moaned in longing below him. She bucked into his hand and grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him down into a crushing kiss.

"Beautiful," he murmured into her lips before removing his fingers and thrusting into her, and when she tightened around him and whispered his name, his _real_ name, he'd hoped the sun would never come back.

**v.**

_Load, aim, fire,_ the bullets rang out and suddenly his hands were coated with blood once more.

**vi**.

He felt Bennet's knife slide across his throat, heard a snap and a gurgle and then it was just black. He fleetingly remembered splitting the cheerleader's skull in two and taking her humanity in exchange for his immortality, wondering in eager anticipation what eternity would look like.

_Forever_, the word hung on his lips, and he thought it'd come far sooner than he'd imagined.

But soon black turned to vein lined red and it wasn't hell, it was the back of his eyelids and he'd never been so happy to feel the pain of his skin stitching back together. His vision was blurred and he reached out to block the harsh overhead light, but instead found his hand intertwined with someone else's.

Elle pressed her pretty lips against his own, her tears wet against his cheeks, and said she wanted to try normal with him instead. If he wanted to change and be good, she'd let him.

_Normal?_

"It's all I've ever wanted, Gabriel. Please. I'm tired of special," she whispered, her hands crackling with rediscovered power.

In the harsh light of day with the buzz of power in his head, normal left a bitter aftertaste and he felt strangled under the weight of what she was asking.

**vii.**

Power he could control, and in controlling power his life meant something. But he could only control it so long as he was in control of himself, and as his breath faltered at the thought of her hands against his skin, he realized he couldn't give her what she wanted without giving up everything he'd worked so hard for.

The beach was dark and there was sand in her hair and lies on her lips. He hadn't planned on her reaction at all. He'd wanted to see her fight him back one more time, for her see him for the monster he was, and then finally just _go_. He got halfway through her skull with barely a whisper from her, blood pouring on to his hands, and as she choked on her breath and stopped moving he realized she was in hopelessly and pathetically in love. As he felt his head throb with a sympathetic phantom pain, he realized maybe he was too.

But it was too late for thoughts like that now. Spiders have to eat.

**ix.**

The hotel room he'd stolen for the night was dim and decrepit, the wallpaper older than him and the sheets seemingly unchanged since the last residents left. It was quiet without her around; she took her gentle hum with her, and without it all he could hear was his own heart ticking like an atomic clock, never slowing and never stopping. Forever, he imagined, would always be something like the inside of this hotel room, caught in time while the world passed on by, unmoving, unchanging, and alone.

Gabriel had grown up thinking he would be something _important_, and somewhere in him he knew he was, very much so; and yet, as he glowed with pride when he perfected throwing electricity just like she'd shown him, he felt a pain in his chest, sharp and quick, and wondered idly who would even care.

He clenched his fist, the blue faded, and that was it; nothing more to tell.

--

**A/N: **Written for prompt #9 (_"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."_ -Oscar Wilde) at sylelle_chall lj. Had a lot of trouble with this prompt and this story. Hope you enjoyed it and thanks so much for reading!


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